Keep Fit Program For The Brain
"It's official: playing go really does keep your mind sharp. Researchers have just released a comprehensive study [nejm.org] of the benefits of challenging intellectual activity among the elderly and found that exercising the mind through board games, social activities and education offers powerful protection against mental deterioration and disease.
'Those who played board games had a 74 percent lower risk and those who played an instrument had a 69 percent lower risk. Doing crossword puzzles cut the risk by 38 percent,' reported Shankar Vedantam in the June 19 Washington Post. The report found that seniors who regularly engaged in mentally challenging pastimes reduced their chances of developing Alzheimer's disease and other dementias by as much as 75 percent, compared with those who didn't exercise their minds."
Nice. Yesterday the Hindu started a sudoku column. It took me some time to get it right; first, I missed a crucial point of the game and then it took me some time to correct my technique. Solved it finally! :D Today morning, I jumped out of bed thinking that i'd solve today's too but the Friday Review isn't Metro Plus so I'll have to wait till Monday :(. Why can't they publish one everyday?!
More information on sudoku at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudoku
7 comments:
hey have u solved the 8-queen problem (its a chess board problem)?
if u havent heard of it, it goes like:-
place 8 queens on a chess board such that none crosses any of the other (queen can move in any direction and any number of paces)
burf .. :D i was making the mistake of solving the sudoku like the eight queen's problem :D .. not diagonally but the horizontal, vertical thing .. and then i realized that each of the nine regions had to have no number repeated inside them .. :)
those things take quite some time!
though maybe that's bcoz i kept getting side-tracked by the crossword beside it...
that makes it easier na...each of the boxes has to contain all 9 numbers.
writing posts is mental activity too :)
i had a look at Metro Plus, it dint had any Su doku problem ...
:(
ansari, you'll improve with practise :P .. me likes this crossword .. i can solve so many more than i can in the cryptic one!
Manu .. hmm, depends on the blog won't you say? :D
Burf .. going by your blog .. I think you found it :)
guess some people need to be reminded of using "brains" by listing ... :D:D:D:D
the last laugh -> :))
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